Congratulations! English MA Students Recognized with Graduate Student Awards
Posted in Announcement News Story | Tagged Award, Department of English, EGSA, MA Program
The English Department is proud to celebrate two of our graduating MA Students’ achievements: both June Yoon and Isaiah Washington were awarded the Exceptional Master’s Student Award! To celebrate in the lead-up to commencement this week, we sat down with our students and asked about their experiences at Georgetown University:
June Yoon, GSAS 2025, MA in English:
Exceptional Master’s Student in the Humanities Award – 2025
1) Tell us about your MA thesis
My thesis, “Outside Techno-Orientalism: Indispensable East Asia in Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix,” probes into the two iconic science fiction franchises and renarrates the films’ use of Asian aesthetics and values, particularly focusing on those of East Asia. While not dismissing Western traces in the films, I suggest the significance of viewing Asia and Asians beyond the scope of techno-Orientalism. I offer a reparative reading of “Asianness” by reconceptualizing Asian values that have been overlooked in the name of techno-Orientalism, which is a concept coined in the West based on the West’s anxiety over the East’s fast technological growth. By illuminating the philosophical, religious, and cultural values that Asian aesthetics and segments embody and contribute to the films’ narrative, my thesis not only emphasizes the indispensable role of “Asianness” but also emphasizes the necessity to explore how the intersection between the East and the West in the films synergizes and creates even more profound meanings.
2) What classes have you been a Teaching Assistant for, and what have you gotten out of that experience?
I was a Teaching Assistant for Professor Phillips’s “Gateway to Film and Media Studies.” It was an amazing class that covered diverse media from films to games. I gained so much from the experience, one of which is the importance of being patient and giving students time to process their thoughts. Especially when facilitating, a brief moment of silence could seem like ages, and it is very tempting to break the silence immediately. Although it was challenging at first, I learned to read the silence instead of dismissing it entirely. Another valuable insight I got from the experience is the importance of challenging and engaging with the class materials, not only as a TA but also as a student. The more I put myself in the shoes of the students, the more I felt connected to them. On the final day of the class, when students said thank yous, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I had been a reliable, resourceful, and supportive TA.
3) How has your MA in English helped you in your career goals?
The two years have deepened my passion for unsilencing the voices of the marginalized. The diverse coursework invited me to step outside my comfort zone and introduced me to various scholarly and literary attempts to make our community a better place to be in. Through the coursework and departmental events, I was able to explore the broader terrain of the humanities, thinking about how I could contribute to the humanities department as a student, a scholar, and a writer. The interdisciplinary aspect of the MA English program was also beneficial, as it offered practically unlimited scholarship opportunities to pursue. Such a program’s design has planted within me a multitude of interests and equipped me with a lens to view literature and media, allowing me to engage with various methods and perspectives to unsilence the silenced voices.
Although coursework and program were helpful, it was the people—professors and peers—that truly helped me with my career goals in terms of what kind of person I aspire to be. Their passion for teaching, learning, and caring for others, along with their support and kindness, has cultivated within me the desire to grow into a future scholar who could also contribute to the community.
4) What do you like to read for fun?
Normally, science fiction and fantasy books are what I would go for, but recently, I got interested in reading anything about space and the mechanisms of sleep. After finishing my thesis, I started reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep!
Isaiah Washington, GSAS 2025, MA in English:
Exceptional Master’s Student Overall Award – 2025
1) Tell us about your MA thesis
My English master’s thesis foregrounds a theme of drowning in Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat’s adult fiction. I argue drowning punctuates her evolution as a writer. Danticat’s first four adult fiction books, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), Krik? Krak! (1995), The Farming of Bones (1998), and The Dew Breaker (2004), each memorialize a Haitian drowning death. Danticat’s inaugural depictions of successful drowning rescues in the endings of her 2010s adult fiction, Claire of the Sea Light (2013) and Everything Inside: Stories (2019), underscore drowning prevention as a priority of Danticat’s recent works. My thesis focuses on “Without Inspection,” the final entry in Everything Inside, as it most forcefully exemplifies Danticat’s shift toward Haitian drowning survival—reviving the drowned Haitian refugees first depicted in her seminal short story “Children of the Sea.” To read it most effectively, I position myself within the embryonic field of literary drowning studies, the interdisciplinary study of law and literature, and Black studies. I argue that Womanism and transnational solidarity, as embodied by food exchange and economic cooperatives, are critical tools in Danticat’s project of supplanting the violent, flattening “boat people” schema with an elucidatory and capacious “undrowned” identity, a framework Alexis Pauline Gumbs gifts. I attend to the personal and political currents that contour Danticat’s literary undrownings, including consecutive family losses and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
2) What classes have you been a Teaching Assistant for, and what have you gotten out of that experience?
Last year, I served as the graduate teaching assistant for Dr. Seth Perlow’s Cultures of Artificial Intelligence, a course that explored the intersections of literature, film, philosophy, and the latest AI developments. This experience allowed me to expand on the group research I began during my undergraduate studies, which examined how representations of androids metaphorize Blackness. I had the opportunity to lead a class on Ex Machina (2014), incorporating poetry, pop culture examples, visual art, and theoretical frameworks introduced in Dr. Peggy Lee’s transformative Race and Surface graduate course to deepen our understanding of the film’s racial and gendered implications.
This semester, I served as the graduate teaching assistant for Dr. Sherry Linkon’s Ways of Reading, an English major requirement that examines texts like Angels in America and Jane Eyre through various theoretical lenses, exploring what it means to be a scholar. I had the opportunity to lead classes on both works. One of my favorite Georgetown memories is the close reading class I led on Jane Eyre, where I framed close reading as an accountability tool, an act of social justice, and an altar upon which the labor of writing is libated.
My teaching assistantships have made me a more capacious thinker and keener observer. I learned just as much as the students I helped instruct. Nothing compares to seeing a student shimmer with understanding—whether through a breakthrough reading of a text or the discovery of a perfectly aligned scholarly source. Each day, I am in awe of my students’ brilliance and the deep care they show for one another. It is my sincerest hope that I have helped strengthen their claims to the title of “scholar” and served as a microphone for their unique and vital academic voices.
At Georgetown, the boy who taught his little sister in his Pennsylvania living room, who drafted syllabi in the margins of class notes, got to teach in Healey Hall the same books he was taught in undergrad and high school. I have been receiving truly heartwarming messages from students reflecting on the impact I had on them as their teaching assistant. One student asked if I was going into teaching, saying, “Because we need professors like you.” My students have given me the confidence to pursue my goal of becoming the kind of professor I was fortunate to have had here.
3) How has your MA in English helped you in your career goals?
In addition to serving as a teaching assistant to two phenomenal professors, I was invited by Dr. Kathryn Temple to present my research in her innovative course, Zombie Law & Literature. This was a full-circle moment for me, as Dr. Temple—precise and uplifting—had also led the thesis seminar I was in. She was teaching Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, which ends with a Black man swimming in a sea of zombies. I spoke to her students about the recurring trope of Black swimming inability in Whitehead’s work and the sea as a site of memory, a key theoretical thread in my thesis. It was a magical conversation—personal, political, historical, and literary dimensions all singing in harmony. This experience exemplifies the kinds of academic spaces and dialogues I hope to bloom.
My mother, Deborah James-Washington, played matchmaker between me and the books that would shape me as a reader, writer, and scholar. Inspired by her gift of literacy, I have made it my mission to nurture a love of reading in others. At Georgetown, I had the opportunity to do so by volunteering for the university’s Angel Book Drive, where I donated and sorted books for children and young adults in the D.C. community.
Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink helped me deepen the public-facing qualities of my work by connecting me with SWIMMING, a D.C. public art project that links the legacies of pool segregation with rising sea levels. I starred in the short film associated with the project, with my original poem serving as its opening. I performed this poem at the launch of the public installation at Marie Reed Elementary School & Aquatic Center. Now, that poem is featured in an art gallery at the YMCA—the only pool available to Black residents during segregation in D.C.
Another one of my poems is featured in the Dear Body of Water exhibition at Lauinger Library, where I had the honor of reading it at the opening reception. As a Prose Fellow for the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, I had the opportunity to engage with my favorite writers, introducing poet Tyree Daye at his reading and leading the question-and-answer period with Edwidge Danticat—another complete circle. Through the Lannan Center, I have been able to cultivate my dual identity as a creative writer. The piece I worked on, radically transformed by the lingering teachings of Rabih Alameddine, spoke directly to my thesis, with its epigraphs drawn from my primary sources.
My one-of-a-kind thesis advisor, Dr. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan—a lighthouse guiding me toward the best version of myself—and Dr. Fink, my second reader, whose support radiates like the July sun, are my models for what happens when one fully embraces both creation and commentary. They, along with many of the stellar English faculty members, helped me achieve my goal of being accepted into English PhD programs. My rigorous coursework has prepared me for my next chapter at Cornell University and has provided me with a toolbox of critical approaches and disciplines. My proposed dissertation topic expands upon the work I produced here, with drowning—its symbolisms and literal hauntings—continuing to be my academic lifeblood.
I have taken advantage of conference opportunities, including Georgetown University’s Plac(e)ing Black Futures Symposium. At the Georgetown University English Graduate Student Association Conference, I presented a paper and moderated a panel. I have also presented at Howard University’s “Crafting Longevity: Literary Arts, Aesthetic Inquiries, and Legacies” Conference and the University of Virginia Department of English Graduate Symposium. Additionally, I will be presenting at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s graduate student conference, “Blue Humanities and Liquid Media: A Watery View of the World.”
As the outgoing Academic Development Chair for the English Graduate Student Association, I was able to continue pursuing my passions for mentorship, community, and academia. I led the organization’s peer mentorship program, bridging the wisdom of second-year students with the enthusiasm of first-years. Additionally, I organized a consortium mixer with students from American, Howard, and George Washington Universities at the MLK Library and hosted a graduation celebration for English M.A. graduates.
While at Georgetown, I worked as a news production assistant at the Washington News Bureau, helping report on the presidential election, the inauguration, the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, and Supreme Court rulings. One of my first assignments was to analyze Supreme Court opinions—exactly what I had practiced in Dr. Christine So’s life-changing course, Race, Law, & Literature.
My experience in the English M.A. program solidified my belief that education has no finish line, as I am a lifelong learner. My heart is full from being part of this family of deep thinkers and devoted truth-seekers.
4) What do you like to read for fun?
I am on a mission to read the complete oeuvres of Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, and Colson Whitehead. I’ve been rereading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous—perhaps my favorite novel of all time—in preparation for his latest release. I adore memoirs, with Saeed Jones’ How We Fight for Our Lives being the one I return to most, and poetry, with Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” being the first poem I ever committed to memory. Imani Perry’s Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People is the book I’m recommending to everyone; it’s the kind of spiritual, heartfelt scholarship I aspire to render.